The number of new dwelling consents issued has trended down every month since August last year

The supply of new homes continues to fall well short of the number required with the trend on new residential building consents falling in February for the seventh consecutive month.

Statistics NZ said consents were issued for 2418 new dwellings in February, barely changed from the 2379 issued in February last year.

Statistics NZ’s trend series, which removes seasonal fluctuations, shows consent numbers have declined on a month-by-month basis in every month since August last year, which is mirrored in the major centres of Auckland, Waikato, Wellington and Canterbury.

This paints a picture of rising consent numbers in the first half of the 12 months since February last year, only to have them fall away again in the second half, leaving consents numbers largely back were they were a year ago.

That target was not reached in any single month over the last year. The nearest month was November when 1188 new consents were issued in Auckland.

In the 12 months to February consents were issued for just 10,045 new homes in Auckland, while it’s estimated that at least 15,000 would have been required to keep pace with population growth, which means Auckland’s housing shortage has worsened by about 5000 homes over the last year.

In the Waikato 294 new dwelling consents were issued in February compared to 274 in February last year, in the Bay of Plenty 226 were issued compared to 274 a year earlier.

In the Wellington region just 133 new dwelling consents were issued in February compared to 113 in February last year.

That means the number of consents issued in the Wellington region was barely above Northland where 131 consents were issued in February.

In Canterbury there was a substantial fall, with 361 new consents issued in February compared to 525 in February last year (the interactive chart below shows the number of consents issued in each region on a month by month basis).

The total value of new dwelling consents issued in February was $912 million, down 1.5% compared to $926 million in February last year.

On the commercial property front, consents were issued for 189,000 square metres of non-residential buildings in February, down 12.9% compared to February last year, while the value of that work ($410 million) was up 10.3% compared to a year earlier.